A Triumph of Liquidity: New Overbought Period for Stocks Despite Political Chaos

Stock Market Commentary One hundred and fifty minutes. The bearish signal that hit the stock market after the last overbought period ended essentially lasted just 150 minutes. Buyers stepped into the market on Monday after lunchtime on the East Coast and essentially barely took a pause until the last 2 hours of trading today (Wednesday, … Read more

A Fresh Burst of Euro-Optimism Ahead of the French Presidential Election

The French people will make a final decision on a President in less than 24 hours from the time of writing. Financial markets are in a much different place now than they were two weeks ago ahead of the initial round of voting. Thanks to the “French Fly” optimism is riding high and all assumptions … Read more

Trump Change: The U.S. Dollar Swings Wildly from Election Despair to Elation

In my last post, I wrote about the small solace I took in profits on my short AUD/JPY position as the Japanese yen (FXY) surged in response to a looming victory by Donald Trump for the U.S. Presidency. At the time, I closed out the position assuming that currency bearishness was over-extended by quick-trigger negative … Read more

The Positive Trade When Incumbent Presidents Run For Re-Election Rarely Lasts

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on November 17, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) In early, July I quantified the very unique tendency of the S&P 500 (SPY) to deliver strongly positive returns in the three months (between July-end and October-end) before a Presidential election … Read more

A 5% Decline In The S&P 500 Within Three Months Would Be A “Gift”

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on August 2, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) A month ago I explained how the three months leading into a U.S. Presidential election featuring an incumbent tend to represent a bullish period (see “The Positive Trade When Incumbent Presidents … Read more

The Positive Trade When Incumbent Presidents Run For Re-Election

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on July 2, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) S&P Capital IQ’s Sam Stovall appeared on Nightly Business Report on Friday, June 29, 2012 to provide some statistics on how the stock market tends to perform in the second half … Read more

Not Yet Useful to Correlate the Unemployment Rate to the Outcome of Presidential Elections

I keep hearing the ominous statistic that no sitting U.S. President has ever won an election with unemployment over 7.2%. I finally decided to look more closely at the numbers after I read another version of this statistic that said no U.S. President since the 1930s has ever won an election with unemployment over 7.2%. … Read more